Genres

Karting games, once only really the dominion of Mario and friends, are starting to get better. If you were going to make a racing game for your franchise, the chances were that it'd end up more South Park and less Crash Bandicoot. But as time has gone by, racing tie-ins have generally got better. Sonic's All Star outings are the perfect example of that.

Bioshock Infinite was one of the best received games of the last year, and it's no surprise that the DLC has caused something of a splash. Placing both Booker and Elizabeth in an alternate timeline in Rapture, the city beneath the sea from Bioshock and Bioshock 2, Burial At Sea is another slice of story that'll leave you open-mouthed, mostly for all the right reasons.

There have been quite a few beat 'em ups in recent years, and you can't swing a semi-rotten cat without hitting a zombie/nightmarish creature game. That doesn't mean that the two combined can't be something interesting and special, it just means that its harder to have the title stand out. That's unfortunate, because Final Exam probably won't get the attention it probably deserves.

If you’re a PS3 gamer, then you’ve probably heard of Quantic Dreams previous title - Heavy Rain. More story focused with simplistic gameplay, with a large portion of that being quick time events, people had mixed opinions on this style of game. It was criticized just as much as it was praised for its style of gameplay and its plot heavy nature, but how does Beyond: Two Souls compare?

It's pretty obvious that Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland, was created from the get go with multiple playthroughs in mind, but even if you decided only to give the game just one playthrough

I've always been fond of games that can take a seemingly dull aspect of life and make it interesting. During the Summer, Lucas Pope managed to make stamping documents thrilling in Papers, Please (one of my favorites this year), but in 2012 the hectic job of sorting luggage at an airport was turned into addicting entertainment with Aero Porter on the 3DS.

The problem with Dungeons & Dragons was that it could only be played with a group. Desktop PCs in the 80s had a few text adventure games that mimicked the D&D experience as a single-player adventure, but PC's were rare and pricey back then. A cheap, portable alternative were Gamebooks that used printed text and images to replace a live dungeon master. They also had simplified D&D style rules to govern variable and give players choice over how their adventure played out.

If you're a core gamer of yesteryear, you can stop reading here. You will hate Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. Whatever you felt Pac-Man was about - how you felt he spoke, where he lived, what his reasoning behind traversing those mazes was - The Ghostly Adventures will throw that all back in your face. It'll take decades of quiet appreciation and turn every facet of that appreciation on its head.

I've been a huge fan of From Software's Armored Core franchise since way back when the original was first released on the Playstation, and while I personally feel that the series quality has seen a gradual decline over the years, mostly due to a change in focus in the form of "fast paced action" as opposed to "slow and clunky" mech battles of old, it has always held a special place in my heart. So naturally when Armored Core V was first announced, I was excited to get my hands on the latest instalment of my favourite customisable mech-based action game, ...

Enslaved Odyssey to the West was a criminally underrated title based on the Chinese classic Journey to the West, made popular in the UK by television show Monkey (or Monkey Magic, if you're from the US). Unfortunately, sales seemed to be about as lousy as the reviews, and with the announcement of DmC: Devil May Cry, Enslaved got thrown out by the anti-Ninja Theory crowd. Released on PC for the first time last week, Enslaved has a second chance to thrive in a post-Last of Us world. Will people finally recognise it for the diamond in the rough it always was?